
©Kurt Van der Elst
Come, strike a pose with the intertwined fabric WOMANEKEN. Choose your piece of protective garment designed for a part of your body you wish to strengthen, reinforce, celebrate. Take a seat on the silver couch in the gallery window.
A WOMANEKEN, A HEAD and A SKRIK BUST, three WOMEN* embodied protective presences, placed at strategic points:
One at the front looking out the window,
One in the center of the space,
One standing in a metal armor at the back of the room.
The first one, A WOMANEKEN,
made of intertwined fabric, knotted recycled household linens, woven band-aids. A revisited mannequin sitting in the shop window who looks out to the street to invite passers-by. This mannequin exists as a sculpted body, already with a life of her own under the garment.
The second one, A HEAD,
from which Damien Cassiers took the essence as a material to start a new work, A MASK. He used both digital and traditional techniques as an encounter with my practice. A HEAD with a crack splitting her forehead, a tear through her right eye.
The third one, A SKRIK BUST,
a metallic woman* bust surrounded by the protective garments designed for several parts of the body that need care. This bust armor is the cast from which all the garments were born. She represents a strong, protective adult woman. She stands against incest, she takes responsibility as an adult towards the child. “I believe you.” Her presence here is an echo to my stage piece SKRIK, which means The Scream.
TORSO, LEGS & FEET, BUST, HEAD, HANDS, KNEE.
Blue armors, uniforms of life. Water, sea, la mer, la mère, the mother in French. Blue that cleanses the wounds, flowing water that soothes the scars. The upcycled IKEA bags evoke domesticity, the home, the mental load carried by women*. I tear them open and empty these bags of their weight to rebuild them into armors. The visitors’ bodies become mannequins in movement within the installation, connecting to the WOMANEKEN and sharing with her the words they carry under their shield resulting in a collective poem of resistance said out loud on the closing day of the parcours.

WOMANEKEN, a live performance and fashion installation
by Elisabeth Woronoff, captured through the lens of Damien Cassiers,
with consulting & production design by Enyd Fracas.
For Mad Parcours Fashion & Design 2nd Edition Dansaert.

12-11-25 -> 15-11-25
W44 Photogallery (Brussels) Mad Parcours


























































